Two Girls Down(62)

Then her mother in the hospital, the last time, Vega leaned down to kiss her forehead, and her mother grabbed her head suddenly and tried to pull her down, but she was not strong at that point. Vega was startled and a little terrified because she’d thought her mother was asleep. Her mother pushed her lips out like Vega was a drink she was trying to reach, and kissed the ridge between Vega’s nose and cheek. Then she went back to dying.



Vega came down from the handstand and sat on the floor with her knees bent and her head between them. She had been at her father’s house when she heard the news. She’d always thought she would just know, that there was a cosmic alarm clock built in her chest linking her to her mother, but no. Her mother had died, and Vega had no idea.

And the Brandt girls were not even blood. These things weren’t real, these connections between family members, husband to wife, parent to child. This psychic trash of people saying, “I knew when so-and-so died because I felt it in my soul or my heart or my pockets.” You didn’t, thought Vega, you had no idea. Those girls could have been in the ground two hours after they disappeared, and all of us have been running like hell in our mouse maze since then, tapping our bells and flags, desperate for pellets.





11

The next morning they arrived at Charlie Bright’s mother’s house early. A garbage truck rambled down the street. Cap pressed the doorbell, a grimy little button set in a rusty diamond.

“Do you want to talk about goals?” he said.

Vega’s right shoulder jerked, the suggestion of a shrug.

“No change,” she said. “Right?”

“You’re asking me?” said Cap.

“Yes,” said Vega.

Cap almost believed her.

Then a dog started barking. Low bark, big dog, he thought. He could hear it sniffing at the door.

He pulled the screen door open and knocked, and the dog continued to alternately bark and sniff. He turned back to Vega.

“Your guy sure she’s here?”

“Yes.”

Cap kept knocking, driving a stick in an anthill and shaking it around. Up and out, everyone.

Then footsteps, and a voice shouted either at Cap or the dog or both, “That’s enough! That’s enough!”

The door opened, and there was a slice of a woman, fat, loose gray curls on top of her head like Easter basket grass, and the dog, medium-sized, pushed his black-olive nose on either side of the woman’s legs.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Mrs. Lanawicz?” said Cap.

“Who’s askin’?”

Great start, lady, thought Cap.



“My name is Max Caplan; this is Alice Vega. We’re private investigators working with the Denville Police.”

Mrs. Lanawicz remained unmoved. She eyed them both.

“I’m all paid up on tickets,” she said.

“Ma’am, we’re hoping you might help us locate your son, Charles Bright.”

A little flare in the dull eyes at the name.

“He ain’t here,” she said quickly.

“Do you have any idea where he might be?”

“He lives up Camden. I don’t know; I ain’t talked to him in six months.”

It was like she had rehearsed a few different things but forgot she was supposed to pick only one story.

“It’s very important we find him,” said Cap. “It’s about the Brandt girls.”

Mrs. Lanawicz puckered up her mouth.

“He’s got nothing to do with anything like that,” she said.

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” said Cap. “We’re looking for someone he used to work with at the Giant, hoping he can give us a lead.”

Mrs. Lanawicz stepped back, a little disarmed.

“Like I said,” she said, quieter now, secretly sheepish. “He ain’t here.”

“Do you have a phone number where we might reach him?” said Cap.

From the side Cap saw Vega step back, off the walkway, toward the street. Now where are you going, girl?

“Nah, he uses those disposable cell phones because he can’t afford a plan, a monthly plan.”

“Address?”

She placed her hand, thick and arthritic, on the doorframe.

“He’s living with my niece, I think. It’s, uh, 2040 Filbert in Camden.”

Cap watched her eyes wander to where Vega was. He didn’t turn around.

“2040 Filbert in Camden,” he repeated. “That a house or an apartment?”

“It’s a house,” she said, still watching Vega.

“Your niece have a phone number?”

“Yeah, I have it, I think some—” she said, and then she stopped, mid-thought and mid-word, and she made her mouth into a little O and her eyes shot open wide.



“What?” she said, pointing past Cap.

Vega charged by him and shoved the door open, Mrs. Lanawicz falling backward but managing to steady herself against a table an eighth her size. The dog looked like a large hamster, a shaved square patch on its side, and continued to bark.

“What the hell are you doing?! You can’t do this,” Mrs. Lanawicz shouted, bringing her claw hands to her head.

“He’s upstairs,” Vega said to Cap, heading for the stairs.